


If you have ghosts

by Polly_Summerisle



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, Gratuitous Tragic Backstory, Horror, Hux is a ghost, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Poe is a real estate agent, Revenge, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-01-25 01:02:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21347716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Summerisle/pseuds/Polly_Summerisle
Summary: Poe is the best Real Estate Agent of the Galaxy. Or, this is what he wants his boss, Leia Organa of Rebel Estate, to publicly recognise. Leia, of course, is not of the same advice. In order to prove her that he can be trusted as her second in command, Poe decides that he will sell a house no one has ever managed to sell before. A house which happens to be haunted by a Regency ghost with a terrible temper, and by his super-spoiled ghost cat.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Leia Organa/Han Solo, Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 71
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1. Every day that you feed me with hate I grow stronger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_most_happy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_happy/gifts).

The house was built in 1786, just in time for the Commander to transfer mother and child without causing a scandal. An unpretentious little thing, it was: no servants' quarters, to begin with. Two bedrooms and a small study upstairs, a rustic kitchen furnished with a long wooden table and a cupboard on the ground floor.

There was also a living room, small but more than decent (and, moreover, the Commander doubted that the girl had many guests to entertain). And there was a courtyard, nothing more than a piece of dirt enclosed by two apple trees and a brick wall. Not particularly attractive if the new owner wanted to go for a walk, but big enough to make a dozen geese comfortable. The Commander, our readers may have noticed, loved to consider himself a man of great practical sense.

Generally speaking, we could say that it was a little pretty country house - certainly more suitable for an honest woman than for a disgraced kitchen servant.

"I did not do it for her, but for the boy", the Commander had confided one evening, pouring a generous measure of Vermouth (an Italian novelty that a proper gentleman could not not possess) into the glass of one of his guests.   
  
"I am a man of honor. And he is still blood of my blood, even if nobody would say it."  
  
"The hair," the other man reminded him, his eyes lit by the mischievous glint of a laughter. "His hair leaves no room for doubt."  
  
The Commander drew out a cigar from an elegant tortoise-shell case, "if it were only for the hair then I could have fathered every Mayfair bastard child." And, come to think of it, it wouldn't have been so unlikely. The Commander had more than one single reputation.  
  
His guest accepted the cigar that was offered to him, "but you are particularly keen on this bastard, I seem to understand."  
  
The Commander's response came with a casual shrug, "I am already forty-six years old," he replied. "A man must have to think about the future. And I have kept Armitage attached to his mother's skirts for too long, with the results that we have seen."  
  
"He is a very polite boy," conceded the other.  
  
"He has the same softness of character as his mother, Mr. Pryde," the Commander ranted, "and the same feminine sensitivity of mind. You should have seen the scene he made when I told him he couldn't take his cat to Bethnal Green.  
  
Mr. Pryde could not help but chuckle."Oh, I think he has already gotten over it."  
  
"Aye," the Commander sneered, not hiding the satisfaction he felt at the thought. "I might have had something to do with that.”  
  
Thus the house was occupied by the little Armitage and his mother, and they spent the following few years, if not happy, at least relatively serene. But, like in every story of this type, serenity did not last long. Brendol Hux - because this was the commander's name - had, as you might have guessed, big plans for his only son. Projects that, unfortunately, would not have been easily achieved if the boy had remained in his pretty house in the North-East of London.  
As soon as Armitage turned nine, in fact, he was enrolled in the same military academy in which, many years before, his father had learned how to handle weapons and how to efficiently hurt his younger comrades. A rather sad story and, we regret to admit it, similar to many others.  
  
We would like, at this point, to be able to say that the boy left the military academy barely changed, and that the first thing he did was to go home, straight back into his mother's arms. But his mother had not been able to survive a particularly cold February, and Armitage had little interest in paying his respects to an unmarked tombstone. We do not know, exactly, what happened in the following years - and besides, in this brief report, we do not have enough space to tell all the stories and tribulations of all the owners of the small house in Bethnall Green.  
We only know that Armitage acquired the rank of General at a very young age, and that he distinguished himself by fighting courageously (like many of his peers) against the French army. We know that Brendol Hux, at that time old but still combative, disappeared in circumstances that were never fully clarified shortly before the Battle of Capo Ortegal. We also know that Armitage finally returned to Bethnal Green, where he spent his last few years. And we know that he died within weeks of his 35th birthday, and that only a few people attended his funeral.  
  
There have been those who spoke of suicide, others of an unfortunate accident. These are gossip that we do not care about. We are here to talk about the house at the corner of what is now called Cyprus Street, a small two-bedroom cottage that over the years has been incorporated into the urban development of the city. Many have tried to sell the house and, we regret to admit it, only a few succeeded, and for a short time.  
Some of the bravest tenants managed to resist for a few months; the others only for a few weeks. The advantageous clauses, the antiquity of the fireplace, the size of the courtyard: all things which had little attractiveness if compared to the strange events which happened in the house at any time of the day.  
  
One of the most memorable occupants of the house was undoubtedly a Kardecist occultist, a friend – as I have been told - of Aleister Crowley himself. He had moved to London from his quiet village in Nottinghamshire, enthusiastic about having a haunted house (a real haunted house!) fully available for his esoteric practices. He left the cottage after about five days, never to be seen again. The removals company that was sent to retrieve his knick-knacks did not notice anything to be considered particularly strange or frightening, except for an inscription on the living room wall, made with a piece of charcoal, bearing the words "GET AWAY FROM MY SIGHT, YOU MISERABILE IDIOT " in beautiful cursive letters.  
  
In the Seventies it was the turn of a hippie commune. Composed of a folk singer, a video maker, a writer of science fiction novels interested in permaculture, and a severely cross-eyed seven-year-old boy, the happy brigade had taken up residence in the house with the conviction that ghosts, if they actually existed, simply needed to be shown a little love and empathy. But the ghost who lived in the the house on the corner of Cyprus Street did not seem to be of the same opinion. And so, after the video maker found another rose quartz unpleasantly stuck inside one of his nostrils, and after the police were mysteriously informed of the unorthodox use that the whole family was making of the mushrooms that used to grow in the garden, the cottage returned to being uninhabited again for decades.  
It was only because of a bet lost during a drinking contest, and to his wife's great disappointment, that Mr. Han Solo of Rebel Estate accidentally acquired both house and ghost.   
  
-  
  
Poe Dameron was in an excellent mood. He had just sealed what he could easily call the deal of the decade. That is to say, he had finally managed to sell that damn apartment in Cambridge Heath.  
  
The client was a gentleman of Iranian descent with a large family fortune and a great desire to invest in real estate. Poe had taken him to the Viktor Wynd, offered him a fruit-flavored non-alcoholic drink, asked the owner if by chance the beetle-shaped table lamp was for sale (obviously it wasn't, but he could easily get a replica for the his client, all he had to do was ask) and, after about an hour and a half, he already had the signed contract in his hand.  
A somewhat unusual practice, but the client's credentials were excellent, and he would have even paid him the cab to go back to the agency, if it hadn't been for Poe’s incapacity of separating himself from his motorcycle.  
  
"Leia, are you ready to nominate me your universal heir?"  
  
Leia, who was on the phone, looked up at Poe and motioned for him to wait. Poe sighed, agreeing to postpone the big announcement for a few more minutes. No problem. A little suspense would only make the news more exciting.  
He slipped into the office next door, looking for Finn. His best friend was bent over the printer, trying to bind together what looked like an instruction manual.  
  
"It's for Rey," he explained, not even giving Poe the time to open his mouth. "The new girl. In the last few days Leia has been _scary_ \- you know, with all the story of the reconstruction of Residence Alderaan, not to mention what happened to the assignment of the public housing project - and she has no time to keep up with her, so she asked me to help her out. I thought that if I summed it up with everything we did in the past few years it would have been easier. A welcome gift. Sort of."  
  
Poe nodded in approval. He had met Rey for the first time just a couple of days before. It had been a brief meeting, but the girl had seemed clever and eager to get down to business. Which was obviously very appreciable, given everything that happened with that unmentionable idiot of Leia’s only son.  
  
"Any news from Ben?" he asked, inserting fifty pence into the coffee machine.  
  
"Nope," was Finn's predictable response, followed by a look that, Poe knew it, meant_ perhaps it is better like this_.  
  
He quickly changed the subject: "Had a good day?"  
  
Poe's face lit up. Now that was the question he had been waiting for. "Oh, you have no idea. I managed to sell number 314. "  
  
"Oh for the love of-" Finn’s eyes widened. "_That _314? Weary moquette and rusty railing and everything?"  
  
At Poe's affirmative nod, he threw his arms around his friend's neck.  
"Oh, and who else if not you?", he laughed, giving Poe a pat on the back that let the other man breathless for a while. "We've been trying to rent it for years! How on Earth did you manage to do that?"   
  
"I am the best estate agent in the whole Galaxy, that's how", Poe laughed. "This time I am finally getting that promotion, I swear to God. Just wait and see."   
  
-  
  
"My congratulations, Dameron," Leia said, smiling kindly. "Good job."  
  
And that was it.  
Poe couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Later, that night, he would have cursed himself more than once for his lack of self-control, and he would have vowed to bite his tongue ten times before speaking again with his boss. But this would have happened in the future, more precisely in about half an hour, and Poe Dameron was a man who loved living in the present, and so he blurted out something which painfully sounded like: 

"Oh."  
  
"Did I say something wrong?", Leia asked, sounding genuinely worried but, at the same time, also genuinely perplexed.  
  
Poe felt his own vanity (a quite considerable entity, notoriously the cause of more than one stupid and badly planned action) quivering at the unexpected disregard with which Leia had just treated him and his professional skills.  
  
"No, you didn't! But-", he followed her into her office, a wide, otherwordly tidy space. "Leia, the fact is- I mean, I just sold number 314! No one had even managed to rent it before this morning, and so I thought-"

Leia's patient smile had not yet left her face, but something else had appeared in her eyes, a light that Poe knew well and that he wasn’t completely sure he liked.

"And I congratulated you. You will obviously take your share of the percentage on the sale, if that's what you..."

"That's not what I meant," Poe interrupted.

In that moment, he knew he had two roads in front of himself: accepting Leia's congratulations with a smile, apologizing for the misunderstanding, while in the meantime swallowing his pride and dying a tiny bit inside, or-

-_or telling Leia it was about time for him to receive the promotion for which he had been working hard for all those years, telling her that perhaps it was the right opportunity for her to nominate him her second in command given the fact that that imbecile of her son had made it very clear that he wished for Rebel Estate to disappear from the face of Solar System, and, really, she and Han deserved better than having their hearts broken by someone who looked like the average Underworld customer on a singularly dull Friday evening, because they had worked so hard all their life and they deserved more than an edgy goth whose inability of accepting constructive criticism had transformed him into a local legend, and that they should once and for all start to look forward to the future of their agency and of their employees and stop waiting forever for their prodigal son to_-

Of course Poe chose the second road. Of course he regretted it almost immediately.


	2. Chapter 2. Just wanna bewitch you in the moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you ALL for your comments, kudos and hits. This is my first work in a foreign language and my first Gingerpilot EVER (although I have been a passionate shipper since TFA... yup. I know. I know.) I was supposed to have this whole thing ready for Halloween BUT. I am a slow writer, but I will try to complete this silly story in a reasonable amount of time. In the meantime, THANK YOU again for your support. 
> 
> Chapter II: some more gothic vibes, Poe being a disaster and creepy stuff happening to him. TW for mild classic horror!

It could have been worse, Poe kept telling himself the next morning. It could have been worse and ending up even _worser_. Like ending with his dismissal, for example. Or even just with him being downgraded as an intern dedicated to photocopies. He knew he probably deserved it (even if he had no intention of taking anything from what he said about Ben back), and he would have accepted the punishment almost willingly, had it not been that for the unbearable idea of not sharing his office with Finn anymore (and therefore saying goodbye to all those _Space Invaders _games played on the arcade game machine they had installed - with Han's permission and a reproachful stare from Leia).

He had half expected Leia to raise her voice (she didn’t). She didn’t even tell him to pick up his stuff and leave the office (and she would have had all the rights to do that). What Leia did instead was _sigh_, and look at him like a particularly affectionate owner would have looked at a dog that, cute but not particularly clever, had spilled a flower pot full of dirt on the fine Turkish carpet of the living room.

"Do you think I am not treating you fairly?" She had asked him, and Poe immediately knew she was being sincere. And he felt like a complete idiot. He sank further into his computer chair.

"No," he replied. "But..."

"But you think I could treat you better," concluded Leia, taking a seat on a chair on the opposite side of the desk.

"It’s just...", Poe continued, half aware of having started to spin his chair left and right. "I believe I have already learned everything I could learn from this job. Don't get me wrong, I like being a clerk, but I think I am now ready to have more ... _responsibilities_?” He pronounced the last word like a question, like he wasn’t actually telling his boss that he was desperate for something to boost his motivation, not that he was expecting Leia to appoint him leader of a rental revolution to overthrow every greedy landlord in London, _but-_

Leia rested her chin on her interlaced fingers. "I see," she replied. There were a few seconds of pause, during which Poe felt, if possible, even more uncomfortable. Then Leia continued.

"Do not believe I did not notice your discomfort, Poe.” She gave him a brief smile. "And although in the last few months I had many things to take care of, I know I should have managed to find the time to ask you how you were feeling."

Poe felt his sense of guilt growing to the point of reaching the ceiling, finding a way out through the chimney and heading into the first available Weatherspoon to drown itself into a pint of Porter.

"I'm just very bored," Poe exclaimed, more and more destabilised by the turn the conversation was taking. "And I'm worried about you and Han, about what happened with Ben and ...", he looked at Leia, nervously torturing his lower lip. "... and the truth is that I would just be able to help, but I have no idea how to do it and I hate feeling useless. There."

This time the silence lasted for so long that Poe started to convince himself that the conversation was over. He was already on the verge of apologizing and shamefully going back to his desk, when Leia spoke again.

"So you want to help me and you want to prove to me that you have the skills to manage the agency in case of my absence."

Poe nodded vigorously.

Leia sighed, glancing at a stack of files piled up on her desk. Then something seemed to dance in her gaze, and her hand reached for a black folder which was laying abandoned on top of a shelf.

"I could have a job for you."

-

My readers will now be wondering if Poe knew about the rumors going around about that pretty cottage on the corner of Cyprus Street. The correct answer to give, in this case, would be: only in part. Don't get me wrong, everyone knew that the house was considered basically impossible to sell. And it was equally well known that Han Solo took possess of it after a couple of pints in excess, or at least it was a quite well know story among certain Rebel Estate employees. Especially after that earful that Leia had given her husband the following day.

Poe had also heard something about the spooky reputation of the house, but he was not the type of guy to give rise to that kind of whispers. He had enough experience in the real estate field to know that some houses were simply wrapped in a thick coat of bad luck, and bad luck had nothing to do with ghosts or evil supernatural entities. Whatever the real reason behind the house’s bad name, Poe wasn’t worried: it was a pretty house for sale in East London, and he was one hell of estate agent. They were made for each other, like vinegar crisps and Magners. Or like Han and Leia. But more like vinegar crisps and Magners.

It was therefore with the most cheerful spirit that Poe secured his bike in front of the entrance to the cottage, a simple wooden door painted in navy blue and flanked by two old-fashioned lamps that seemed to have been there for at least a hundred years.

He would have started his day with a rapid recon tour, to decide which maintenance works had the priority. Just quick look, something to do in no more than a couple of hours - or at least before sunset, since he was still waiting for the electricity supply to be activated.

He turned the key in the lock without encountering resistance, and he went inside. The house had a strange smell. It smelled of dust and something else, something old - no, not old, something _antique_. The original XVIII century wooden floor was still in place, as it were the fireplace, the stairs, and a few pieces of furniture. Possibly also the window frames. They definitely needed some oil, he murmured to himself, as he opened the windows of the ground floor to let the two rooms facing the street finally get some fresh air.

It was just as he was about to climb the staircase that lead the upper floor, that his attention was caught by a movement on his right. It was little more than a shadow, small and rapid and dark, which Poe barely managed to sense before it vanished towards the fireplace.

_A rat?_ He wondered, slightly uncomfortable. From what he knew, no recent report on the status of the sewers had ever been compiled. Still, a rat running on a wooden floor usually makes some noise, and that black thing (but was it really black? There was a part of Poe which strongly believed it saw something _orange_) -

Poe bent over the fireplace, but he saw nothing. He even stirred a bit of ash with the tip of a metal poker, in case the mouse had been particularly clever and tried to disguise itself under the coal, but he couldn’t find a single trace.

Something that had nothing to do with logic told him to look inside the hood. He bent down further, his head disappearing inside the fireplace, and looked up. In the dark, two small yellow eyes blinked rapidly in his direction. Poe took an instinctive jump back, forgetful of the existence of the mantlepiece, painfully hitting the back of his head against the hard stone surface.

He found himself sitting on the floor, covered in ash up to his elbows.

"What the actual ...", he muttered, rubbing the offended area over his neck. He slipped under the hood again, this time being careful not to be taken by surprise. But as much as he tried to adapt his eyes to the darkness that surrounded him, he didn't see anything.

Now, Poe certainly couldn't be considered a rodent expert. His naturalistic vocation was exclusively dedicated to parrots, or, to be more precise, cockatoos, of which BB-8 was probably the most spoiled specimen that had ever appeared on the face of the Earth. However, despite his inexperience, he was quite sure that rats were not provided with a pair of large yellow spherical eyes.

He wiped his ash-stained hands on his jeans, and tried to think about what to do next. Perhaps it was a trapped barn owl. He knew that certain things could happen, especially if the chimney was not in a good state. _The poor thing must be scared to death_, he thought. _I should call the Animal Welfare service and ask them for advice._ As you might have guessed, Poe really loved birds.

At that moment both windows on the ground floor slammed shut, leaving Poe surrounded by a complete darkness.

_What a wind_, Poe thought, _and in this season! So much for those climate change deniers-_

The owl completely forgotten, he reached for the windows.

"Stupid hinges", he cursed under his breath, trying in vain to open the shutters. "You would benefit from a whole bottle of oil, my word." He tinkered with the window for a few more minutes, until he eventually admitted his defeat. _Old crappy building beats modern man, shutter beats Poe. For now._

Refusing to give his original plan up, Poe turned his phone’s flash on, . He could still open the windows upstairs. Perhaps they were in better condition – or, at least, not completely wrecked as their downstairs counterparts.

Guided by the thin beam of light of his phone, he headed for the wooden staircase that led to the sleeping area. It looked a bit shaky, but stable. He began to climb the steps cautiously, for fear of inadvertently stepping on a dead rat or some other crap forgotten by decades of neglect. He was almost halfway up the stairs when the mobile battery went fully dead, leaving him alone in the most complete darkness.

In the total silence that had fallen on the house, Poe heard himself swallowing nervously. Then he heard another noise, the last noise he would have ever expected to hear in that place. Steps. Steps on the upper floor, approaching the staircase. Poe felt his breath catching in his throat. Unable to move, stuck in the dark, he could do nothing but listen to those steps that were getting closer and closer and closer. When it became clear to him that they were no longer moving in the direction of the staircase, but that they were already on the steps, and that they were heading towards _him_, he finally managed to shake himself from the torpor in which he had fallen. He run across the dark, stumbling to reach the front door.  
Which, of course, was locked.

The steps, meanwhile, had stopped. Poe took a deep breath. If there was someone in the house, and even if that someone had bad intentions, unless they were able to see in the dark, they were not going to have the upper hand. Everything could be said about Poe, but not that he was a coward. The darkness and the mysterious intruder had destabilised him, but now the fear was beginning to slowly leave space for adrenaline. And to another sensation, a mixture of inexplicable indignation and desire to let the stranger know that, if he was looking for trouble, he had found it.

"Despite my job, I have nothing against those who squat in abandoned houses", he declared to the dark. "But I must admit that taking advantage of the darkness to be a creeper is a bit of a shitty move, chap."

No reply. Poe took a deep breath.

"Sorry if you live here, buddy. I really am," he continued, clutching the phone in his right hand and lifting it up to his face, ready to hurl it at the stranger if he tried to get close. "We can work it out. Believe me, I am the first one who thinks that the gentrification of the city has brought nothing but troubles for honest workers." He breathed in deeply. "If you are in need of a place where you could spend the night, I work for the council and we can ..."

All the lights in the house turned suddenly on. Poe would later tell Finn that he had been sure that the supply of electricity had never been activated. But the lights went on nevertheless. And that would have been tolerable too, and perhaps explainable, certainly acceptable. But the voice that reverberated between the walls of the room, that voice that seemed to come from the very foundations of the house and that promised to do horrible things to him if he only dared to set foot inside their property a second time

_If you ever touch my mantlepiece with your filthy fingers AGAIN_

that one, that one Poe did not know how to explain it.

The front door burst open, and Poe rushed out without looking back.


	3. Chapter 3. Well, I stepped into an avalanche

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS NOTE CONTAINS TROS SPOILERS (but the chapter doesn't, so if you haven't already seen Episode IX you might want to skip this and head directly to the chapter) 
> 
> so, this is basically a story of revenge. it was conceived as such since the beginning, but after what happened in TROS i have decided that I would have given my characters the best happy ending they could hope for. so bear with me. there will be angst, shenanigans, the most unlikely love story, lots of cat hair but, must of all, the sweetest of revenges. because we know someone deserves that. 
> 
> thank your so much, as always, for your kudos, comments and bookmarks. lots of love. x

  
The bowl of chips, drowned in melted cheese, was laying on the table, untouched. The little pub was already beginning to get crowded.

"Do you want me to get you something else?", asked Finn, trying to mask his concern with a casual tone. Poe shook his head.

"Listen, buddy, I know you literally begged me not to say _I told you so_, but ..." he tried again, finally deciding to bite into a potato before the cheddar turned into a cold gummy dough. "Like, what did you expect? Entering the most haunted house in London? You were lucky not to come out with your hair completely white!"

"That's not the most haunted house in London," said Rose, sliding her fingers over the screen of her smartphone. "That's 50 Berkeley Square."

"Well, it was haunted _enough_, at least for my taste," Poe protested, glancing at his own face in the reflection of the window. No silver hairs in sight, for the moment. Being scared to death was one thing, but seeing his black curls becoming grey ahead of time was a totally different matter. He could not have endured it.

"So you admit it was haunted, then?" Rose urged.

Poe looked at his friends, and the events of the morning seemed to be light years away.

"I... I don't know", he began, fiddling with a toothpick. "I mean, I remember what happened, of course, I remember the windows and the fireplace and the ..." And the steps, getting closer. And the voice, metallic and furious and _dead_. He took a deep breath. "And the rest. And it was scary as hell, I'm not going to deny it. But it could have been anything, ok? It could have been an elaborate prank from Leia. I would have deserved it.” But Leia was not famous for being a prankster, Poe and his colleagues were more than sure of that.

Rey, who until that moment had stayed silent, eventually spoke.

"What did you feel while you were in the house?" She asked pragmatically. “Any sudden temperature change? Foggy windows? Increase in electrostatic voltage in the air? "

Everyone turned to look at her. The young woman continued, unperturbed.

"What I intended to say is ... did you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand on end even when you weren't scared? Have you by chance perceived that something wasn't completely right even before all those things you mentioned earlier started to happen? "

Poe shook his head again. Rey drummed his fingers on the table.

“We can’t exclude it was a ghost, but we can’t be sure either. Being sensitive to paranormal manifestations can be very personal. "

Everyone's attention was now entirely devoted to the girl. Finn cleared his throat.

"Rey ... is there something you need to tell us?"

In fact, yes, there was something Rey had never told his colleagues. But try, for a moment, to put yourself in her shoes: it is certainly not the easiest thing in the world to go to people you barely know and tell them _hey, did you know that I see things around me everywhere I go?_ Not that she didn't try in the past. When she was in second grade, and a certain lamp in her classroom kept on burning out, she tried to suggest the teacher to leave some presents for the poltergaists. Needless to say, the suggestion didn't made her the most popular girl in school. Years later, while she was trying to help a particularly bewildered will-o'-the-wisp, she had been almost chased by the hunting dog of a farmer who wasn’t particularly happy to see her wandering in his field.

There is never an easy way to tell people you have never met before that you are ghost-sensitive.

“I believe that what Poe told us is true”, she answered, after a moment of silence. “I believe that there is something inside that house that clearly doesn’t want him to sell the property.”

Poe shoot her an outraged look. “Bold of him assuming I would give up so easily.”

“_Him?”_, asked Rose, frowning.

“It was a male voice”, replied Poe, shrugging. “Do ghosts use our same gender categories?”, he immediately asked Rey, who seemed to be, among the lot of them, the most reliable source concerning ghosts.

“Some of them are”, she answered. “It depends on the nature and circumstances of their, well- there’s more than just one kind of spiritual entity, let’s put it that way.”

“How did you happen to know so many things about paranormal activities?”, asked Finn, the admiration in his voice palpable. Poe could see Rey faintly blushing.

“Well, actually...”

“She’s a medium.”

The last words were pronounced by a man who had entered the pub only a few minutes before, and who had managed to listen to the conversation without being noticed, protected as he was by a tall wooden cupboard.

There is no use for me in keeping the identity of the man secret, for he was a very well know acquaintance of Poe and Finn. He was – some of you might have already guessed it – Benjamin Solo, Leia and Han’s only child and greatest source of troubles.

“What the fuck is he doing here”, Finn asked Poe, not really caring about being heard by the new arrival, who had started eyeing Rey in a way that was making everyone feeling uncomfortable. 

“It’s always nice to see you, Ben”, smiled Poe. “Glad to see you are spending the evening in the way you love the most. Lurking in the shadows and shit.”

“It’s _Kylo_”, answered the man, a murderous light in his eyes.

“How did you know? How did you know I was a medium?”, demanded Rey, startled.

“Because I am, too.”

“You are a _what?!_”, exclaimed Finn, his face a mask of disconcert.

“A medium. Like my mother, and my grandfather before her.”

Poe tried to mentally overlap the image of his boss fining a particularly greedy landlord with what he knew of seances and occultism, but in vain.

“Yeah, sure”, he said, casting a sideways glance at Finn and Rose, who were unsuccessfully trying to suppress a laugh. “I don’t think that dressing in total black and hanging out with your friends in expensive goth clubs counts as mediumship, Kylo.”

“Like you would know who I hang out with”, the other man answered, his voice now low and menacing. Poe wasn’t scared. He had known Ben Solo for years, and there was nothing that the man could do or say which could intimidate him. He was working with _Leia_, for Heaven’s sake. Her bratty son was nothing if compared to her.

“Listen, man, I know how you love to live for the drama but I just had the shittiest day in ages and...”

“Who told you I was a medium?”, Rey insisted, now visibly annoyed. “Was it Leia? Was it her?”

Kylo laughed. “I haven’t been talking with my mother for ages, girl”, he answered, tilting his chin towards her. “I have sensed it. It is impossible for me not to. I see how you try to keep it hidden, but it’s too loud, too intense for me not to feel it.”

“You better stop being a creep _right now_, Ben”, Finn warned him, protectively trying to reach for Rey’s hand. Poe, in the meantime, was sure he was hallucinating. What the fuck was going on there? Why was Rey validating Kylo’s nonsense?

Rey squeezed Finn’s hand. “It’s ok”, she said. “And he’s right. It’s not how I wanted to tell you, but...” She looked at Finn and Rose, and then finally at Poe. “It is true that I am a medium. And it’s also the reason why I have started to work at Rebel Estate.”

For the first time in his life, Poe couldn’t find anything smart to say. At least he was in good company, judging from the expressions on Finn’s and Rose’s faces.

“I used to work in a charity shop in Croydon”, she explained. “It wasn’t a real charity, it was more... It sold stuff that was difficult to find anywhere else. Weird stuff. Taxidermy dioramas, electrical components for things I had no idea even existed, replacement parts for XIX century ceramic dolls. That sort of junk. And sometimes Leia popped up and asked for specific things and one time...”

And one time she asked Rey for spirit slates.

“Spirits have always been with me”, she continued. “But until I met Leia I had no idea that I wasn’t the only one who could interact with them. When she asked me for _séance_ tools I felt something I still find hard to explain, something like a hand pushing me forward towards her. Before I had time to realise what I was doing, I was already asking her if she could see spirits as well.” She smiled at her colleagues. “A few weeks later I was working at Rebel Estate.”

“Well”, began Poe, after a moment of silence. “Now this explains a few things.”

“Like what?”, asked Rose.

“Like why Leia decided to punish my insubordination by sending me in that bloody house.”

Rey smiled. “I don’t think it was her intention to punish you. She trusts you more than you think she does.”

At those words, Kylo snorted. “I wonder why.”

“I don’t know, man”, responded Finn, rolling his eyes. “Maybe because when she tries to contact him he calls her back. Just an idea.”

I do not think it will be necessary to annoy my readers with the detailed description of the following five minutes. Such minutes were, in fact, extremely chaotic, noisy, and almost violent. They ended as abruptly as they had started, with the owner of the pub unpleasantly kicking Poe, Finn and Kylo out of the premise. As for Rey and Rose, they were invited to follow their friends outside in a slightly gentle manner.

“Well, thanks a lot, _Ren_”, mumbled Poe, rubbing his left cheekbone.

“My pleasure, Dameron”, answered the other man, trying in vain to plug the blood which was leaking from his nose.

Rey cleared her throat. “Well, since we are now forced to change plans for the evening”, she ventured, her hands firmly tucked inside her oversized coat’s pockets. “How about a quick trip to the house? Just to take a look.”

Poe froze on the spot. “_Fuck no_”, he whispered. “You had been waiting the whole evening to say that, hadn’t you?”

She shrugged, uncapable of hiding the twinkle of curiosity and excitement in her eyes. “It’s just an idea. It will be fun! I mean”, she continued, blissfully unaware of the expression of pure horror painted on Poe’s face. “Now you know what to expect. And, most importantly, you won't be alone. We’ll be with you the whole time, and I will try to figure out what kind of entity you’re dealing with.”

“_We?”_, asked Finn, taken aback. “It’s not like I don’t care about Poe’s dedication to our agency’s cause, but... It’s already dark. Wouldn’t it be better if we go tomorrow morning? With daylight?”

“I’ll go with them”, smirked Kylo. “It’s been a while since I had an interesting case of haunted house to work on.”

“Like hell you are coming”, snapped Poe.

“I will”, Rose volunteered, excitedly taking Rey’s hand. “I love ghost stories.”

Finn sighed. “Fine, then. But only because it’s you, Poe. Only because it’s you.”

Poe, his fear momentarily forgotten, gleamed.

-

While the livings were discussing how many people had the right to get into an uber car, the dead finally managed to pass through the wide mirror which was collocated on the upper floor of the pretty cottage on the corner of Cyprus Street. 

"I am back", he announced to the empty house.

A small orange shadow emitted an indignant meow, and run to hide under a bed.

"I visited the other side only for a handful of minutes", the dead protested. "Your pretence of outrage is nonsensical."

The orange shadow answered with a low, resentful growl.

The dead sighed, and sat on the bed. "You know I always come back, Millicent", he said. "You know."


	4. Chapter 4. Then the door was open and the wind appeared, the candles blew then disappeared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Gingerpilot fandom, and sorry for the incredibly late update! This chapter has been difficult to write - I always have a terrible time when it comes to writing action scenes, and this one is packed with action (at least for my standards). As usual, thank you so much for all your lovely comments, kudos and bookmarks - and for sticking up with this silly gothic story. 
> 
> As for this chapter: CW for some violence (that is to say, poor Kylo has an unpleasant encounter with our ghost) and some swearing here and there.

If they had told Poe that, one day, he would have let Ben Solo sneak inside a Rebel Estate property with the intention of improvising a seance, he would probably have laughed. And yet here he was, opening the door with shaky hands, the smell of dust and of the oldest things he was capable of imagining already invading his nostrils. He didn’t know what to expect – probably some kind of resistance, or that cold voice, again, or even to see something or _someone_ – a pale figure on top of the stairs, as translucent as glass, raging to see their propriety violated twice in the same day. Poe shook his head. There was silence, and darkness, and the ragged breath of Finn behind his shoulders. Nothing else. And there was no reason why it should have been otherwise.

He entered the hall, immediately followed by Rey and Kylo. The darkness was so thick he couldn’t see the girl, but he could hear her slowly inspiring and expiring, steady and controlled despite her evident excitement. In another situation, it could have almost had a soothing effect. But entering a haunted cottage was a bit of an extreme situation, even by Poe’s standards. 

“It’s the stupidest thing we’ve ever done”, he could hear Finn say, somewhere behind him. “Worse than that one time we entered the Emirates Stadium wearing West Ham colours.”

“Only because Arsenal hooligans don’t have supernatural powers”, Poe replied, although he wasn’t completely sure of that. He still didn’t know how they managed to escape them. (I had been informed that they took refuge behind the counter of a nearby Ethiopian restaurant, and that they spent the rest of the evening nervously munching large bits of plain _injera_ until they were sure there was no one left in Holloway Road who wanted to place their heads on a red-blue-and-gold spike.)

Rose closed the door behind her and turned the flashlight of her phone on, illuminating the wooden staircase which lead to the upper floor.

“That’s it”, Poe said, lowering his voice, his mouth unpleasantly dry. “That’s where I heard the steps approaching me.” He took a deep breath, unsuccessfully trying to hide his uneasiness. He turned his flashlight on as well, pointing it towards the place where he remembered the fireplace was. “And this is where I saw the rat-like shadow. And the eyes.”

Rose hummed appreciatively. “Where shall we start?”, she asked Rey, which was intently looking at the ceiling. Despite the dim light, Poe could see her delicate features tensed into a concentrate frown.

Kylo approached the girl, pointing towards the upper floor. “You feel it as well?” He asked, almost in a whisper. Rey nodded. “I do.”

Kylo smirked. “I knew it there was something worth seeing in here.” He took a few steps towards the centre of the hall, his face now turned towards the staircase. After a moment, he extended his hand towards Rey. “Shall we go?”

Poe could see Rey looking at his outstretched hand, but she didn’t move. An unpleasant sensation started to cradle inside his chest, but he tried to shrug it away. They had just entered the house. Things could not be _already_ compromised.

“What... what’s upstairs?”, he asked, nervously glancing at the ceiling.

“Something bad.” Rey answered, closing her eyes and inspiring deeply. Ren lowered his hand, muttering something which sounded painfully like _that’s exactly the reason why we came here. _

Poe nervously rain his fingers through his hair_, _feeling panic building up in his chest. “Oh, brilliant. It’s our ghost, isn’t it?”

Rey shook her head. “I don’t know”, she replied, casting a glance in Kylo’s direction. “You must have sensed it as well. It’s weird. It’s like there’s this thing, and I have no idea of what it might be but it’s _dreadful_, and then...” She suddenly turned towards her left, towards the entrance which lead to the room which once was the cottage’s kitchen. “And then there is more. Another entity, maybe? Or two? I have never...”

“Well, let’s not waste our time. Let’s go upstairs and find it out.”

“Kylo, wait”, she argued. “I don’t think we should.”

The man huffed, now visibly annoyed. “We will never know what we’re dealing with if we don’t go upstairs and see it for ourselves”, he replied. There was something patronising in the way he was addressing Rey that made Poe uncomfortable. He almost wished the ghost to appear and scare the hell out of him, just to cancel that condescending expression from his face.

For an ironic twist of fate, the ghost chose that exact moment to launch a particularly voluminous book straight to Ren's head.

“There you are!”, the medium exclaimed, spurting towards the bookshelf. “I had started wondering if you were too much of a coward to show yourself, now that you have been outnumbered.” Another book flew in his direction, but this time Kylo easily dodged it.

“What a pity”, Poe could hear Finn whispering under his breath.

“I am suddenly rooting for the ghost”, Rose added. “He’s totally checking Kylo’s vibes, isn’t he?”

Rey, however, did not seem to share their amusement.

“Stop angering him!”, she cried, running towards the other medium. She took hold of his hoodie, forcing him to face her.

“What on Earth-”

“I can distinctly perceive how he feels, now. He’s annoyed.” Another book hit Kylo on the back of his head. Rey completely ignored it. “Alright, he’s furious. Poe was right, he’s a male. And he wants us to leave the house.”

Half a dozen of books was suddenly thrown towards Finn and Rose.

“You don’t say?!”

Rey lifted her hands up, exasperated. “He wants to hurt us and he wants to hurt us badly, we all agree on that. But what I am trying to say is that he’s not part of the same entity which lives upstairs!” She rapidly bent down, three volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica barely missing her. “I told you, there’s something really evil upstairs, while he- ” The rest of the Encyclopedia started chasing Poe around the hall. “He’s not evil, he just hates us for entering his house without having being invited!”

Poe, in the meantime, had managed to find an improvised shelter between two cupboards. He did not dare to turn on the flashlight of his cell phone again, for fear that the ghost would find him and start attacking him once more. Wishful thinking, given the fact that it was highly probable that the ghost did not need light to find his way in the dark. Unsurprisingly - but Poe had long stopped being surprised - this didn't seem like bothering Rey.

“Try to stop Kylo from going upstairs” he could hear her say, and he realised she was talking to him. “I will try to understand what’s going on here.”

Poe flashed his phone light across the room, looking for Kylo. _Of bloody course_ he was already climbing the stairs.

“Now it’s not the time to show off, Ren”, Poe called out, grudgingly leaving his improvised shelter and running towards the other man.

If Poe had been more careful - surely if he had been less nervous, or busy watching where to put his feet, or terrified at the idea that the ghost had started to levitate not only books and ornamental complements but entire pieces of furniture - he would have realised that Kylo had stopped moving. And he would also have realised that a strange silence had descended on the house, that the books had stopped being thrown around, and that, generically speaking, the overall commotion of just a few moments earlier had suddenly been followed by a bizarre stillness – that kind of stillness which usually preludes to an outbreak or an explosion of some sort - or, in any case, to something extremely unpleasant.

Then it started to happen.

At first, in the thick darkness which surrounded the house, Kylo was no more than a black shape, first bent over himself, then slumped over the wooden steps of the old staircase. And then he started to slowly lift himself up. And there was something wrong, something different in the way he was walking. His broad shoulders seemed thinner, his back straighter. There was a composure in his movements that Poe had never seen before, a haughtiness in his walk that did not belong to him.

Then he spoke.

“How dare you.”

And, with that, Poe knew they were fucked.

The voice that had pronounced those words was not Kylo's voice. It was the same voice that Poe had heard reverberating within the walls of the house only a handful of hours earlier, clipped and aristocratic and polished, filled with unmistakable indignation and spite.

Now the owner of the voice was raging. And he was inside Kylo’s body.

In the course of his thirty-two years of life, Poe Dameron had been scared only a few times. Rarely for himself, often for the people he loved. Lionhearted as he was, he faced the challenges of life with greater ease if he knew that his family and friends were happy and safe. After the death of his mother (a day that Poe would never forget, a day filled with incommensurable fear and sorrow and pain) he promised himself that he would have done everything in his power to keep his loved ones safe - which, until that moment, had meant taking care of his aging father and of his friends' mental and physical health. In a life overall joyful (although sometimes marked by routine) it wasn't a difficult task. Keeping his family safe meant spending most of his evenings in his father's small kitchen, listening to him talking about his days as a fighter in the Civil War, about the smell of the Caribbean Sea and about the sun setting behind the hills of Quetzaltenango - and, most of all, about Poe's mother. Taking care of his friends was even easier - don't let them drink and drive, lend them your coat if they were cold, forbid them from texting their exes while drunk. Since his mother died, Poe had never feared for the safety of someone he loved. Until that moment.

“How dare you entering my property uninvited”, the voice which wasn’t Kylo’s continued, eyes now fixed on Poe. “Not just once, but twice in the same day, without any regard for courtesy.” Behind his back, Poe could hear Finn whimper. “You act as if this place belongs to you, you lay your greedy hands on everything you see, and then you chase my cat, bold enough to call her a _rat,_ because you clearly wished to add insult to insult...”

_What the hell is the ghost talking about_, thought Poe, suddenly less scared and more confused than he expected to be. Then he remembered the little shadow running towards the fireplace, and the pair of round yellow eyes looking at him from inside the hood. _Oh._ _That’s what it was. _

“But it looked like a rat”, he protested, obviously without thinking about the implications of what he was saying, and immediately regretting his terrible choice of words.

A furious wind hit the house. Violent gusts entered the fireplace, filling the room with ashes and forcing Poe and his friends to step back and cover their faces with their scarfs.

“Something is telling me you gave him the wrong answer”, Finn coughed, putting himself in front of Rose to shelter her from the wind.

“I should make you pay for your impertinence”, the ghost roared, his voice reverberating across the house. “And for trapping me inside this graceless body!”

A wave of annoyance seemed to cross Kylo Ren's face, deforming it into an expression that, Poe suspected, had more to do with the wounded vanity of the medium than with the ghost who possessed his body.

“We are sorry”, intervened Rey, her voice high-pitched over the noise of the wind. “We were just trying to help our friend, we didn’t imagine...”

“Liar!”, the ghost interrupted her, his voice deformed with fury. “Do not try to fool me, child! You sensed it the moment you entered my house, didn’t you?”

“The fuck is he talking about?”, Rose screamed, ducking her head just in time to avoid a piece of wood.

“The thing upstairs”, Rey answered. “He’s guarding something upstairs. Something bad.”  
  
“Silence!”, the ghost ordered. “You won’t dare saying another word!”, he ordered. Then Kylo fell on his knees, frantically trying to reach for the handrail to keep himself upright. In the eerie light which surrounded the room, Poe could see droplets of sweat starting to appear on the medium’s forehead.

Finn tried to reach for the other man. “Stop hurting him!”, he shouted, only to be silenced by a violent blast of wind. Kylo moaned in pain.

“He asked me to take possess of his body!”, the ghost replied, his voice loud and shaking with indignation. “The audacity! He basically forced me- would you believe that?” Poe definitely believed that, but he wisely decided to keep it for himself. “Never, in almost two hundred years-”

“Then leave his body!”, Poe protested. As much as he never liked Kylo Ren, he had no desire to see him suffer further. His arrogance had already been punished enough.

“I am not taking orders from you, you loathsome boor!”, the ghost yelled. Of all the things that Poe had been called in the course of his life, _loathsome boor_ was certainly _something. _Almost too extra to be actually offensive.

Rey, in the meantime, did not seem willing to give up so easily. “Please, let us help you”, she almost begged, approaching the staircase. “I feel how much pain that thing is inflicting on you.”

At those words, the ghost laughed. “You know nothing about pain, child.”

“I can try to understand. Please.”

It would have been nice, at this point, if the ghost, moved with emotion by the girl's heartfelt pleas, had accepted the help that was offered to him. We can almost picture him explaining to his horrified audience what was the horrible thing that he had been restlessly guarding for a couple of centuries. Telling Rey and Poe and everyone else what had happened in that house - perhaps carefully avoiding the bloodiest and most painful details - and what forced him to remain anchored to that place year after year, guardian of a something he had promised it would no longer harm anyone ever again.

But if the ghost had agreed to accept Rey’s help, I wouldn't be here to tell this story.

“Leave”, the ghost said. “Leave now, and do not come back again.”

Then silence fell over the house. The wind stopped, the windows ceased to tremble, the books lied down on the wooden floor, suddenly lifeless. And Ren started to lift himself up.

Poe and his friends run towards the medium. Finn was the first to reach for him, promptly passing an arm around his waist to help him get up.

“Let’s go, guys”, Rose whispered, her eyes fixed on Ren’s pale face. “Let’s go before the ghost changes his mind.”

They rushed towards the exit, Finn and Rey carrying Kylo who now appeared to be unconscious, Rose holding the door open to let them pass. She lifted her face towards Poe, who was still in the middle of the hall, his eyes fixed on the staircase, an indecipherable expression on his face.

“Poe, we can’t...”, she began, but Poe was already reaching for the door.

“I am sorry you got pulled into this”, he said, his fingers closing on the doorknob. “Take Ren to the hospital. I will talk to Leia tomorrow morning.” With that, he pushed his hand forward, slamming the door shut. He turned towards the staircase, deliberately ignoring Rose’s frantic knocking and screams of protest.

“And now, _hijo de puta_, how about showing me your face?”

  
  
  


  
  



	5. Chapter 5. If you have ghosts, you have everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I say that I am working on a new chapter, you need to believe me. When I say I am a shamefully slow writer, you need to believe me AS WELL. 
> 
> In this chapter: mild horror, swearing, Poe trying not to think with his most private parts.
> 
> As usual, thank you for following this story - and for all the nice and warm things you wrote to me on Twitter. I love you, Hux fam x

Poe later described how he had the distinct impression that the house had been separated from the rest of the world. He knew, of course, that what he was saying made little sense - no matter how much Rey and Kylo nodded - but there was no other way to describe what he felt. It wasn't just the abrupt, complete silence and the disappearance of Rose's voice and of the sound of her fists slamming against the door, or the sudden absence of any creaking and screeching sound between the walls of the house - it was rather an awareness, the same awareness that makes you wake up in the morning knowing that the Earth lays under your feet and the sky stands above your head – it was the awareness that, apart from the house, nothing existed.

I wonder, now, if only Poe had addressed the ghost with words of apology instead of aggression, if things would have gone differently. Maybe not. Perhaps the ghost's fury towards the intruder had already reached the point of no return, and all the things that happened to Poe in the few hours he spent inside the house might have happened the same. Your narrator, as you can see, is not exempt from fantasising, and although she tries to be as reliable and impartial as possible, from time to time she cannot help but wondering if certain things that were said and certain things that were done were somehow destined to happen exactly the way they happened.

Poe, you might have already guessed it, didn't turn around. And if a part of him was aware that something impossible had just happened - how to describe, otherwise, the feeling of being completely disconnected from the rest of the world, to the point of not being able to perceive anything outside the house’s four walls? - the other part was too busy elaborating the vision that had just appeared before his eyes to care about the possible disappearance of every other living being.

Because, in front of Poe, silhouetted against a grey twilight that was not night and it was not day, there was the ghost.

Those of you who have imagined a surprised reaction from our protagonist are certainly on the right track. However, if you have imagined it as due to Poe's inexperience with ghosts, or motivated by who knows what aberrant and grotesque vision, it pains me to report that you are out of the way.

Poe's surprise was mostly due to an exclusive factor: the ghost was beautiful. And not, mind you, beautiful in a generic or impersonal sense, as the princesses and princes of most fairy tales are often described. Beautiful in the sense that every fantasy, every physical preference for this or that other somatic trait Poe had ever seemed to have in his life had just materialized before his very own eyes.

Poe Dameron, it must be said, was not a person obsessed with the physical beauty of others - certainly no more than he was obsessed with his own. He had his preferences, by all means. He could not help but admire the elegance of a slender body and a pair of tapered fingers gracefully holding an almost finished cigarette, but he quickly changed his opinion once he discovered that the object of his desire was an arrogant prick (a characteristic that people with long elegant fingers and high cheekbones and a disdainful attitude, sadly, seemed to share).

In the case of the man who was standing in front of him, however, Poe would have probably made an exception.

The first thing that Poe noticed was not his height, or the grace of his posture, or the thinness of his waist - all things that, in due course, obviously caught his eye, making him feel a bit dizzy - but the hair. He had been convinced that a life spent in the United Kingdom had made him immune or at least indifferent to red hair, but evidently he had been wrong. In his defence, he did not remember ever having seen such a shade - neither blond nor coppery, more similar to gold than fire. It seemed to light up the penumbra with its extraordinary colour. Mesmerized by the apparition, it took him a few seconds to notice the rest - no less unexpected, and certainly no less extraordinary.

The man in front of him was wearing clothes that would not have been out of place in a period drama. Not that Poe could call himself an expert - his cinematic tastes, alas, corresponded to the stereotype of a fast engines and science fiction enthusiast - but he was living in England and, well. There was no way to escape Pride and Prejudice, no matter how much you tried.

Apparently, the ghost had taken inspiration from the male protagonist of Pride and Prejudice not only for the outfit, but also for the expression - a mixture of disappointment and annoyance, with just a hint of disgust. Then he spoke.

"If you were a man, I do not say my peer, but at least an honourable one, I would not hesitate for a second to challenge you to a duel."

Okay, maybe the whole Pride and Prejudice thing was getting a bit out of hand.

"Too bad it's the 21th century, buddy," Poe couldn’t help but reply, raising his hands as if to say _and_ _what can you do about that_. "I am pretty sure you can't put people to the sword and think of getting away with it anymore."

The ghost - or whatever it was - wrinkled his nose in annoyance.

"Even though we live in a degenerate era in which every moral value has been lost, it does not mean that a gentleman should not adhere to an appropriate code of conduct."

Poe had never been in such a paradoxical situation. He would have expected the ghost to attack him, like he previously did. But the ghost wasn’t attacking. The ghost was _complaining_.

“Yeah, well, which code of conducts does “throwing the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ into other people's heads” follow, exactly?"

The ghost seemed, if possible, even more offended.

"Evidently the degeneration that took possession of your age has corrupted you to such an extent that you find it perfectly acceptable to give someone access not only to your home, but also your innermost thoughts!"

A part of Poe was about to reply that, if the ghost felt the desire to invade him, he would not have stopped him. Another, more mature and less subjugated by men with sharp cheekbones and penetrating green eyes, advised him to quickly change the subject.

"What have you done to the house?"

The ghost raised his eyebrows - red, symmetrical, perfectly drawn. _This is really unfair, _thought Poe.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's as if ..." Poe gestured in the direction of the door. "You cut the rest of the world out."

The ghost suddenly seemed very uncomfortable.

"It was not my intention. I have lost control. Your vile insult...", he paused, evidently distressed. "It never happened before."

For the briefest of moments, Poe seemed to spot another emotion on his face - fear. Instinctively, he took a step towards the ghost who, now he could see it, seemed to be much more corporeal than he ever expected.

"Is it everything all right?"

The ghost smiled. A lugubrious smile, which made Poe freeze to the core. "What do you think?"

Poe exhaled slowly. "I got myself into a pretty mess, didn't I?"

The red-haired man elegantly shrugged. "I guess it was time for someone to deal with your arrogance." He approached the fireplace, in the middle of which orange flames were now happily flickering. "I would be a hypocrite if I denied that your misadventure is giving me an unexpected pleasure."

The room had regained colour. The plaster on the walls was no longer peeling, but it seemed to have been freshly applied. Poe looked around. The windows, that morning covered only by battered wooden shutters, were now hidden by embroidered cotton curtains. The books had returned to their place in the bookshelves, the bindings undamaged and new. The floor was covered with a thick sheep fur rug. Parallel to the carpet, turn towards the fire, there were two armchairs. One of them was occupied by a ginger cat, who stared at Poe with lazy disinterest. The ghost - Poe kept calling him that, even though it was clear that he was as corporeal as Poe himself - sat on the other one.

Poe felt a cold chill creeping up his spine.

"What have you done?"

"I already told you. I lost control. " The man sighed. "Which I agree it is disgraceful. It will not happen again. "

Poe rushed towards the front door. The ghost slowly tilted his head in its direction.

"I would not do that, if I were in you."

_Bullshit_, thought Poe. _I'm out_.

As if he had read his thoughts, the ghost shrugged. "Go ahead, by all means."

Poe opened the door.

In front of him there was a moor, which stretched as far as the eye could see. Once grassy, now reduced to a few dry and grey patches, interrupted here and there by the spectral profile of a lifeless tree. A heavy, lead-coloured sky faded towards a white and empty horizon.

Poe ran out. The first thing he noticed was the complete stillness of all things - not a breath of wind, not the call of a bird. The ground beneath his feet was hard and dry, as if it hadn't seen a single drop of rain in months. The grass was exhausted, mingled with dust. The air was drenched with a heavy smell, a wet and warm smell that seemed to desire to weigh on Poe's lungs and crush them.

When Poe turned back towards the house, the ghost was waiting for him, framed by the doorway.

"This is not fun, pal."

"I do not recall saying it was", the other answered, clipped.

"What the...what the fuck is even that?!" Poe gestured towards the desolate landscape. "What's that shit?!"

The man scrunched his pretty nose in an expression of annoyance.

"Nothing you should be concerned about."

"Nothing I should — Oh, for fuck's sake ... Where the fuck has London gone?!"

"Nowhere. Do you really think a city could come and go as it pleases? "

"Well, since there used to be a bus stop right exactly where that bloody dead tree-"

The other man sighed. "Inconsequential. Now, if you are done wasting my time, I have some important duties to attend inside. "

This said, he walked back into the cottage, leaving the entrance door open - an explicit invitation for Poe to follow him inside.

_Screw this_, he thought. He would not have returned to that house for all the pretty ginger ghosts in the world.

Okay, so he probably wasn't in Bethnall Green anymore. That didn't mean Bethnall Green wasn't _somewhere_. And maybe even easily accessible. Maybe Poe had passed out, or hit his head, and the red-haired man had taken him somewhere around the Green Belt or the Epping Forest - an undoubtely creepy behaviour, something he should probably tell the police, or at least Leia, who was probably scarier and more efficient than the standard bobby.

Perfectly aware that none of the rational explanations he had tried to give himself made sense, Poe walked. Without a precise direction, unable even to distinguish where the sun was, but with a great desire to put as much distance as possible between himself and the damned house, he entered the moor. Taking advantage of the flat terrain, and of a couple of general notions about orientation that his mother had taught him many years ago, he tried to follow a straight line, occasionally stopping to listen if there was a stream or a busy road nearby.

He had travelled for about half a mile, when he found himself surrounded by a thick fog. It was a dense and whitish water vapor, which deposited a cold and humid patina on his skin. When Poe licked his lips to moisten them, he discovered that it had a strange metallic aftertaste.

Every tree, every possible landmark was soon engulfed by the mist, until all that was left was a thick, white and suffocating nothing. When he decided to turn around and retrace his steps, Poe realized that the cottage had also disappeared, engulfed by the fog like the rest of the world.

He took a long breath.

_Calm down. You got this. It's like that one time you went to Halifax and you missed your stop and you had to walk all the way back from Bradford. Same stuff. Same mist. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just England. _

He started walking again. The fog was now so thick that Poe found it hard to see his own feet. He tried to make his cell phone work - no signal, _obviously_. He now seemed to hear sounds in the fog, as delicate as a breath, or perhaps voices, voices coming from vocal cords so thin they were almost imperceptible, voices telling him _to go on, that that was the direction right to follow, that it was understandable that Poe would feel a bit tired, and there would be nothing wrong with resting a little, a few more steps_ and _then he could sit and maybe close his eyes a for a while, because he had walked a lot and he deserved a long rest, without anyone to disturb him_

As he closed his eyes, Poe felt a hand grabbing him by the back of his jacket, yanking him backwards, and making him fall on his back. Someone, somewhere above him, was cursing.

_Are they really calling me a blunderbuss_? Was his last coherent thought.

Then he closed his eyes, and the voices stopped.


	6. Chapter 6. Like no other to you what you've done you cannot undo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you thought I had abandoned this fic. I have not, and I still care about it like the first day. The last few months have been a bit hard on me. A bit hard on everyone, I suppose.  
But now things are slowly starting to get better, and so am I. 
> 
> A special thanks to my readers for not giving up on this fic, and to the Gingerpilot Discord server for being a bunch of beautiful, supportive and kind souls. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS: swearing, advanced banter, a couple of sexual innuendos, a bit of classic horror.

He was suffocating.

Something was pressing against his chest and neck, taking his breath away. He could feel it right above his own heart, heavy and warm and vibrating against his throat. It covered him from under his chin to his navel, blanketing him in its heavy and warm...

_...Fluffiness?_

Poe slowly opened his eyes. A ball of orange fur was curled on his chest, purring happily. A cat.

_That cat._

Poe sat up. The cat squirted away, hissing outraged, its tail puffed and stiff, quickly disappearing behind a door that had been left ajar. The door of a room Poe had never seen before

He took a look around. He quickly discovered that he was half-sitting, half-laying on the most uncomfortable bed he had ever lied on. The mattress was thin, stuffed with something that was making his skin itch. There were white curtains hanging above his head, and a metal object, resembling a pan, hung to the tall bedframe.

The rest of the room was occupied by a chest of drawers, and by a small a dressing table surmounted by an oval mirror. Both pieces of furniture were simple, almost austere, but new.

As for Poe, he felt as if a truck had run over him at full speed. He sat on the edge of the mattress, his dangling legs brushing the wooden floorboards, marveling at how the bed was not only outrageously uncomfortable, but unnecessarily high as well.

The mirror on top of the dressing table was tilted towards him just enough for Poe to get a pretty good idea of the state of his face and clothes - wrinkled, dirty and incontestably out of place in a room that would have probably thrilled a couple of Museum of London curators.

Poe had never considered himself the brightest star in the sky, and yet he was pretty sure he knew where he was. What he didn't know was how he got there.

He remembered fog and, before that, a desolate meadow swept by a muggy wind. And he obviously remembered the brief encounter with the owner of the house, green eyes and bad temper and all the rest.

Speaking of which.

Poe rose to his feet and headed for the door, making the wooden floorboards creak loudly. If the ghost was still in the house (and there was no reason why he shouldn’t have), he probably must had already noticed that his unwelcome guest had woken up. (Assuming he hadn't already been alerted by the cat. Of all the improbable things that were happening to Poe, that would certainly have been the least odd).

As if to confirm Poe's suspicions, the red-haired man was waiting for him in the corridor.

“How long have I been off?” Poe asked, running a hand through his hair and managing a friendly smile.

The other just tilted his head to the side, his eyebrows furrowed in a politely confused expression.

Poe sighed. _Right. XIX century ghosts._

“How long have I been sleeping?”, he reformulated, taking care to keep his accent as neutral as possible.

"Less than what I expected, considering the fact that there was a solid possibility that you would not wake up at all", answered the other one, sounding almost disappointed.

Poe decided to dismiss it as a joke. For the moment.

"What happened?"

"What do you remember?"

“Uh, basically nothing. I remember putting as much distance and possible between me and this house and just...walking. Fog. Not much else. " He rubbed the back of his neck. "Someone talking to me."

The other man gently detached a chandelier from a sconce just beside the bedroom’s door. The silver buttons of his waistcoat gleamed for a moment, reflecting the light of the flame.

“Would you please follow me downstairs”, he asked in a way which sounded more like an order. He waited for Poe to follow him, probably not trusting leaving him alone after his brief escapade into the mist. Poe would have liked to be offended by the obvious lack of trust, but he knew it was his fault he never gave the ghost concrete proof of his actual reliability.

Not that it was _entirely _his fault. The ghost could have been a little bit more amicable, for a start.

They walked down the short corridor in silence, passing two closed doors and a singularly looking mirror, big enough to occupy the entire height of the wall, from the floor to the ceiling.

_This is the upper floor_, Poe thought, suddenly nervous. _Where Rey and Kylo perceived the evil presence was._

Almost sensing his thoughts, the ghost turned to face him.

"Is there perhaps something troubling you?", he asked, unexpectedly gentle.

Poe glanced towards the mirror.

"I really don't know where to begin."

The delicate features of the ghost were starting to betray his impatience. "You may entertain me with the up-to-date chronicle of your troubles once we are comfortably seated in the _parlor_", he said, with the air of one who would have preferred anything to hearing Poe narrate the up-to-date chronicle of his troubles.

They had now reached the stairs. The ghost stepped aside, gesturing for Poe to descend before him. There was a rush of urgency badly hidden behind his good manners, a kind of impatience that showed in the way his gaze went from the face of his - no doubt unwelcome - guest to the corridor they had just walked down.

Poe was not in a position to protest or to even try to temporise and explore the upper floor of the house on his own. In the course of the last few hours - the precise number of which he had, by his own admission, forgotten - he had probably consumed all his personal supplies of reckless actions to perform without unduly putting his life at risk; although, considering the fact that he was a) in the company of a suddenly-very-corporeal ghost and b) in a place that was all but 2019 London, where the fog had voices and Bethnal Green didn't exist, there was the concrete probability that his existence had already been considerably compromised.

The sound of a doorknob frantically moving down and up made them both turn around.

Someone was trying to open the door of the room behind them from the inside.

"Go downstairs", the ghost ordered him, his delicate face suddenly very pale.

The noise created by the mistreated doorknob had now been replaced by a series heavy knocks against the door, as if someone was trying to knock it down.

The ghost grabbed Poe's wrist, pushing him firmly towards the stairs.

"Go downstairs and sit down!"

What was left of Poe's sense of self-preservation was telling him to do as he was told. But the door was shaking under the blows it was receiving, threatening to jump off its hinges and crash to the ground, and Poe couldn't take his eyes off it.

“Go, I said!”, the ghost yelled.

Something slipped between Poe's feet, almost making him lose his balance. The ginger cat, which had emerged from who knows where, had reached its master and was now hissing at the door, the hair on its back standing on end and its small white canines bared in a snarl.

For once, Poe did as he was told. He ran down the stairs until he reached the entrance, the sound of blows becoming stronger and stronger by the minute. He turned to look up towards the top of the stairs. The red-haired man was standing impassive, his face tilted towards the door.

“Go ahead, keep on trying. Be my guest”, Poe could hear him scream above the din. "The door is locked and so it will remain."

Something beyond the door uttered the most miserable wail Poe had ever heard in his life. The blows had now turned into a scrape, like that of an imprisoned animal desperate to find a way out.

"I told you. Surely you thought that, week as I am, it would have been easier", the ghost, to Poe's enormous amazement, laughed. "But I am not weak. I am patient. You should have learned your lesson a long time ago. "

With a last desperate bark, the presence threw itself against the door. The hinges creaked under the impact of the onslaught, and the whole house echoed with the sound of something heavy hitting the wood. Then, as it began, it ended.

The ghost descended the stairs unhurriedly, smoothing back his hair, now disheveled.

Poe had no idea what he just saw. He tried to get the ghost’s attention with a polite cough, but the other man completely ignored him and called for the cat, which had gone to hide behind a bookshelf during the altercation. He tried again, this time coughing twice. The ghost threw him an annoyed look, and sat on one of the two armchairs in front of the fireplace.

Poe hated him.

"Please spare me the cryptic phrases that you certainly can't wait use to answer my questions. What the fuck was _that_?", he asked, pointing towards the upper floor.

The ghost sighed.

"A memory that does not accept to be such."

Fair, alright, Poe didn’t hate him. He _super _hated him.

“Are you by any chance able to express yourself in a way that doesn't give me a headache? I swear to god, mate, every time I try to ask you a question it seems that you take pleasure in giving me pointless answers. "

The other man, now decisively more insufferable than pretty, had the audacity to look offended.

“Do you really think I owe you something like an answer? After all the things that you have done? After you entered my house without my consent, even taking your friends with you- "

“The house is for sale!”, Poe exclaimed, moving to stand in front of the ghost. “It has changed a hell of a lot of owners over the last decades, you can't ask me to give a special treatment the only occupant who has never wanted to get his ass out of here and find another accommodation!"

He was now talking like the standard estate agent. Leia wouldn’t have liked it.

“The house has never had any other owners than myself”, the ghost answered, his hands firmly grasping the armrests of the chair. “All the other people were nothing more than unwelcome parasites who showed up here without an invitation, and whom I took care to persuade to leave in the way I considered most appropriate. "

“Have you ever thought about how unsuccessful your strategy has been in the long run? I mean, you have been here for a hundred and fifty years- "

"One hundred and sixty-eight."

"Fine! One hundred and sixty-eight! And people keep trying to occupy your house."

"Evidently."

Poe wondered what it would have happened if he tried to strangle a ghost.

"Maybe throwing books at people's heads will keep them at bay for a year or two, but there will always be someone trying to come here and occupy in this place."

The other man wrinkled his nose.

"I'm perfectly aware of it."

“So why don't you get over it? Instead of picking on those who are just trying to do their job, instead of transporting them...here, wherever we are? "

A murderous light illuminated the ghost’s eyes.

"Believe me, if I had known you would have been able to reach me here, I would have made sure to keep you at a distance with other methods."

Poe shrugged. He was starting to get tired of the whole situation.

“Is it too much for you to explain, once and for all, what the fuck happened to me? Seriously, I'm slowly starting to get used to the idea of spending the rest of my days locked between four walls with a lunatic who lives surrounded by fog, a cat and something that the aforementioned lunatic is holding captive upstairs, but I'd like to at least understand how it happened. "

The ghost chuckled.

"You won't spend the rest of your days here, of course", he answered, like the mere idea of him and Poe sharing the same spooky house for all eternity was extremely amusing. Poe couldn’t help but feeling offended.

"Good to know, however you didn't answer my question, for a change", he grumbled.

"Is this the gratitude you usually show towards those who save your life?"

It was the tone in which the question was pronounced, rather than the question itself, that made Poe feel a bit like shit. The ghost had stopped looking at him, all his attention now devoted to the cat playing with a fringe of the carpet trapped between its teeth, tormenting it with small rapid kicks. Poe felt suddenly very guilty.

"No, you're right," he replied, taking his place on the other chair. "I have no idea what happened out there, but ... Thank you? For not letting me walk into a bog or whatever unpleasant surprise envelops this place? "

The ghost stared at Poe with an indecipherable expression for a time that seemed excessively long.

"I accept your apologies. I trust that from this moment on you will follow my dispositions without questioning my authority. "

Poe couldn't help himself. He laughed.

"I am not one of your servants, milord."

“You most certainly are not. I would have already punished you for your insolence. "

For a long, surreal moment Poe wondered if he hadn't ended up, by complete chance, in some sort of weird kinky roleplay. An escape room, but with a hot and insufferable staff member. Had he not seen books flying towards Kylo Ren's head with his own eyes, he would have sworn that Finn had organized an early birthday party for him. Not that hitting Kylo Ren in the head with a couple of books wouldn’t have been a funny way to celebrate one’s birthday.

"So. About that thing that happened when I was probably going to die and you kindly decided to save my life. The voice in the mist. What was that? "

The ghost casted a quick glance out of the window.

“They are the ones who live under the hills. They do not like it when people wander on their roads without paying the toll. They consider it extremely rude. "

The answer he was given, like all the others, did not make the slightest sense. Poe took a deep breath, forcing himself to count to ten before saying something rash. He stopped at five.

"You know that none of what you are giving me is an explanation, right?"

The ghost looked at him in a way that made him feel like a not particularly intelligent puppy. He reminded him of Leia. A lot.

"I was aware that your time and age do not distinguish themselves for culture and knowledge."

_Ok, Mr. Asshole. Two could play this game._

"Do you usually get off insulting other people's intelligence? Because I am not usually into that, but you’re almost unrealistically cute despite your shitty attitude, so I am happy to make an exception. "

The ghost blinked, twice.

“Ok, let me rephrase that”, Poe smirked. “Does insulting people arouses you? In a sexual way? "

Poe, of course, expected an outraged reaction. He did not expect _such_ an outraged reaction. The ghost jumped quickly to his feet, his cheeks now the same colour of his hair. He brought a hand to his side, as if looking for the hilt of a sword which - fortunately for Poe - was temporarily absent.

"The audacity you have!", he exclaimed, probably trying to sound authoritarian and failing miserably because of the obvious embarrassment painted on his face. Poe found it adorable. It almost made him want to kiss him on the tip of his nose. “The complete lack of decency!”, he continued, slightly more collected. "Never, in the course of my exceptionally long life, I had to deal with such..."

"Whoa there!" exclaimed Poe, taken aback. "What did you just say? Your exceptionally long life?”, he asked, confused. "Aren't you a ghost?"

“I am not a ghost!”, the not-a-ghost (_I should really ask him for his name one of these days_, Poe thought to himself) was now yelling. "I have nothing in common with ghosts! Ghosts are parasitic entities which thrive on suffering and despair, I have nothing to do with them. Your- your insinuation is vile. "

Poe raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"All right, all right. Sorry again, my mistake”, he sighed. "As you can see my experience with supernatural beings is a bit limited."

"Quite.”

Poe pretended he didn’t hear that.

“Ok, got it. You're not a ghost, and I believe you. What are you, then? "

The man looked at him for a long moment. In the whitish light that filtered through the windows of the room, he seemed to grow even taller - his back straighter, the carved line of his cheekbones sharper, the brightness of his eyes more vivid.

“I am General Armitage Hux of the British Empire. And I am a wight.”


End file.
